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Ingolf U. Dalferth

Transcendence and the Secular World

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Ingolf U. Dalferth

Transcendence and the Secular World

Life in Orientation to Ultimate Presence Translated by

Jo Bennett 2

nd

, revised and translated edition

Mohr Siebeck

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Ingolf U. Dalferth, born 1948; 1977 Promotion; 1982 Habilitation;

Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology, Symbolism and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zurich; since 2008 Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduale University in California.

ISBN 978-3-16-156329-4 / eISBN 978-3-16-156330-0 DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-156330-0

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie: detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

Title of the first (German) edition 2015: Transzendenz und säkulare Welt.

Lebensorientierung an letzter Gegenwart

© 2018 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems.

The book was typeset by Martin Fischer in Tübingen, printed by Gulde Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Nädele in Nehren.

Printed in Germany.

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To the PRT students in Claremont who fought for their program

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Preface to the 2018 English Edition

This book is the last of a series of studies written in recent years on questions of human life and existence. The translation of the first book of that series was published under the title Creatures of Possibility. The Theological Basis of Human Freedom (Grand Rapids, Michigan: BakerAcademic, 2016). The second Selbst- lose Leidenschaft: Christlicher Glaube und menschliche Passionen (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013) has not been translated yet. The third one is the present volume. I am greateful to Jo Bennett who has again produced an excellent translation. She is a master of the art of translation, and I am fortunate to have had the chance of working with her.

I also wish to thank Katharina Gutekunst from Mohr Siebeck for her interest in the translation and the constructive collabora- tion in the production of the book. Marlene Block has again been of invaluable help. I am grateful to her.

The book is dedicated to the Philosophy of Religion and The- ology (PRT) students in Claremont who stood up and fought for their program because they believe in academic excellence and the future of the humanities.

Ingolf U. Dalferth

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Preface to the 2015 German Edition

As long as it is necessary to emphasise that we are living in a secular age, we are not yet living in one. Even in the 21st century, religions play an important role in our world, in the private lives of many people and in the public sphere. It is daily apparent that this is not entirely a good thing. Religions can bring out the best in human beings, but they can also delude them into doing their worst. They paint us a picture of heaven, yet they can make life hell on earth. To them we owe our insights into the harmony of the universe, the power of love and the possibilities of a shared humanity. But time and again, human lives are devastated by the destruction of order, the temptation to hatred, the suppression of freedom and the justification of inhumanity beyond comprehen- sion. We need to pay heed to both, where religion and non-reli- gion are concerned. To live religiously is not good per se, and to live non-religiously is not evil per se. In both cases it depends on how one is what one is and how one does what one does. One can live non-religiously and be an exemplary human being, and one can believe one is living a religious life and behave like a beast.

Christians therefore do well to see the secular world and society not purely in negative terms, but to strive for a discrim- inating view and attitude. In many respects it is an advantage that we no longer live in a society dominated by religion, but in a secular one, in which freedom of religion is held to be a fundamental right. Undoubtedly we may deplore the loss, in Western modernity, of much that is familiar. Yet much which was the stuff of dreams has been gained. No one who has the good fortune to live in a free society which values justice and equality, respects the distinction between state and religion and upholds

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X Preface to the 2015 German Edition

the fundamental right of freedom of religion can seriously want to forgo all of that. Never have people been able to live as freely by their religious convictions as they can in secular Western society. But never has there been such bitter opposition, backed by appeals to religious conviction, to the modern principles of freedom without which such a life would not have been possible.

Christian theology ought to be adopting a critical attitude to the current swan song of secularisation and the fashionable heralding of a new post-secular religious era. From the very be- ginning, the Christian faith has made a decisive contribution to the worldlification of the world, the critical appraisal of religion, religions and religiosity and the re-creation of human life in the presence of God. Christians have been and are being persecuted regularly on account of this critical faith. Christian faith is about the orientation to God’s presence in all spheres of life, beyond the boundaries of prevalent religious forms and often in distinction from them. Correctly understood, the Christian life orientation1 moves beyond the alternative between religious and non-reli- gious life. Its point of reference is not any distinction between the profane and the holy in the world; rather, it is the self-mediating presence of God, and the distinction, established by this presence of God within the possibility space of the world, between a life that orients itself to that presence (faith), and a life which does not (unfaith). The philosophical code of this life orientation is the distinction between transcendence and immanence in the practices of life.2 These signify, not distinct areas of life, but different attitudes towards all areas of life on the basis of an event

1 On the concept of life orientation cf. I. U. Dalferth, Selbstlose Leidenschaften. Christlicher Glaube und menschliche Passionen, Tübingen 2013, 48–50.

2 In this book I use ‘transcendence’ as a shorthand term for ‘the tran- scendence’ and ‘the transcendent’. Where there is need of a more detailed definition of this orientational concept as it contrasts with ‘immanence’, it is given in the relevant context.

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XI Preface to the 2015 German Edition

which can be encoded as the irruption of transcendence into immanence and which can lead to the reorientation of life as it is opened up to transcendence. This philosophical distinction is paralleled in Christian life and thinking in the distinctions between creator and creation, divine and worldly, the ultimate presence of God, unchanging and effective everywhere, and the changing presence in which we live temporarily, whether it be in faith, in which humans live their lives in orientation to the ultimate presence, or in unfaith, in which they do not.

This book is about orientation to this ultimate presence and to the primacy of transcendence within the immanence of a secular world. This primacy manifests itself in life by means of events that are often completely ordinary, but which create an awareness of the distinction between transcendence and immanence by showing that and how transcendence is distinct from immanence, making itself present and interpreting itself as transcendence. And since we are unable to orient ourselves by this guiding distinction without making further distinctions, it is about the distinctions by which such a life orientation to the ultimate presence takes place in practice, consciously in faith, and factually in unfaith.

The book deals with material from the following publica- tions: Religion als Privatsache? Zur Öffentlichkeit von Glaube und Theologie, Theologisch-praktische Quartalschrift 149 (2001) 284–297 (Chapter H); Glaubensvernunft oder Vernunft- glauben? Anmerkungen zur Vernunftkritik des Glaubens, in:

F. Schweitzer (ed.), Kommunikation über Grenzen, Gütersloh 2009, 612–627 (Chapter D); Weder möglich noch unmöglich.

Zur Phänomenologie des Unmöglichen, Archivio di Filosofia / Archives of Philosophy LXXVIII (2010) 49–66 (Chapter G); Reli- gionsfixierte Moderne? Der lange Weg vom säkularen Zeitalter zur post-säkularen Welt, Denkströme. Journal der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 7 (2011) 9–32 (Chapter A); Ist Glauben menschlich?, Denkströme. Journal der Sächsischen

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XII Preface to the 2015 German Edition

Akademie der Wissenschaften 8 (2012) 173–192 (Chapter D);

Andererseits. Zur Phänomenologie des Entscheidens, Archivio di Filosofia / Archives of Philosophy LXXX (2012) 145–159 (Chap- ter E); Ereignis und Transzendenz, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 110 (2013) 475–500 (Chapter B); Ist radikale Negativität möglich?, in: E. Angehrn / J. Küchenhoff (eds.), Die Arbeit des Negativen. Negativität als philosophisch-psychoanalytisches Problem, Weilerswist 2014, 37–60 (Chapter F).

I should like to thank the publishers for their permission to use and transcribe these texts and to take their thinking onward.

I also wish to thank my publishers Mohr Siebeck for their interest in the subject matter and for their excellent and constructive collaboration.

Ingolf U. Dalferth

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Table of Contents

Preface to the 2018 English Edition . . . VII Preface to the 2015 German Edition . . . IX

A. Orientation by Distinctions . Christian faith and the secular world

1. Secularity, religion and spirituality . . . 1

2. Being a Christian as a dual and double-sided decision 3

3. Religion in late modernity . . . 6

4. Sociological interpretations . . . 9

5. The ambivalence of the secular . . . 12

6. Secularisation as the loss of significance of the religious . . . 15

7. Collapse of the theory of secularisation . . . 19

8. The dialectic of modernity . . . 22

9. The differentiation between the divine and the worldly: worldliness . . . 24

10. The differentiation between the religious and the secular: secular worldliness . . . 26

11. Secularism and fundamentalism . . . 28

12. The ambiguity of the concept of post-secularity . . . 31

13. Trajectories of secularity . . . 38

14. The one-sidedness of the secularity debate . . . 40

15. From the future of religion to the truth of life . . . 41

16. Orientation to the ultimate presence . . . 43

17. Orientation by differentiation . . . 46

18. Transcendence and event . . . 49

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XIV Table of Contents

B. Event and Transcendence . Three distinct event discourses

1. The everyday world of events . . . 53

2. Events of being . . . 54

3. Aporias encountered when explaining the world . . . 55

4. The Leibniz-world . . . 56

5. The aporia of the idea of God . . . 58

6. The aporia of the idea of the world . . . 60

7. Sense-events . . . 64

8. Master, Hysteric, University Discourse, Mystic and Analyst . . . 68

9. Speech-events . . . 72

10. Ways of naming the event of transcendence . . . 75

11. The event of the Word of God . . . 78

12. Existential event . . . 80

13. Transformative transcendence . . . 84

14. Event of being, sense-event and existential event . . . 85

C. Transcendence and Immanence . A fundamental distinction for religious life orientation today 1. The essence of the distinction . . . 87

2. The hermeneutic of an orientational differentiation . . . 89

3. Here and There . . . 91

4. A complete alternative . . . 91

5. Transcending . . . 93

6. For and by . . . 94

7. The ambiguity of self-transcending . . . 95

8. Vertical and horizontal transcending . . . 96

9. Absolute and relative transcendence . . . 97

10. Borders and limits . . . 98

11. Loss of transcendence in modernity? . . . 100

12. The dual role of the Christian faith . . . 101

13. Three theological transcendence discourses . . . 105

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XV Table of Contents

14. The priority of transcendence over immanence . . . 107

15. The impossibility of negating creation within the creation . . . 110

16. The worldlification of the world in Christianity . . . 112

17. The sacramental presence of transcendence within immanence . . . 115

18. The Christian understanding of transcendence and its consequences . . . 118

D. Faith or reason? Critique of a confusion 1. A false antithesis . . . 124

2. The many sides of belief . . . 125

3. The grammatical distinction: belief in a fact vs. trust in a person . . . 127

4. The epistemological distinction: belief vs. knowledge . 129 5. From knowledge to belief . . . 133

6. Of knowledge without belief . . . 136

7. The anthropological distinction: belief vs. non-belief . . 139

8. The theological distinction: faith vs. unfaith . . . 142

9. The possibility of having faith . . . 148

10. Reason and faith . . . 149

11. Reason of faith or reasonable faith? . . . 151

12. In the context of the third element . . . 154

13. Reason . . . 156

14. Situated reason . . . 158

15. Faith and unfaith . . . 160

16. Faith and reason . . . 163

17. Reason of faith . . . 167

18. Reason of faith or faith of reason? . . . 168

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XVI Table of Contents

E. On the one hand / On the other hand . Decision-making as orientation through the making of distinctions

1. Deciding as distinguishing . . . 171

2. Choosing between alternatives . . . 173

3. Theoretical approaches . . . 174

4. Phenomenological description . . . 176

5. Decision as explanans or as explanandum . . . 177

6. Either / or: the weak concept of decision . . . 178

7. On the one hand / on the other hand: the strong form of decision . . . 179

8. Another way to make a decision . . . 180

9. Staged decisions . . . 182

10. The place of freedom . . . 184

11. Situation and self . . . 185

12. Possibilities vs. alternatives . . . 187

13. Decisions for us vs. decisions by us . . . 188

14. Decision-making: impossibility, reluctance and inability . . . 191

15. The impossibility of not deciding . . . 191

16. Fundamental decisions . . . 193

17. From choosing to determining . . . 197

F. Wholly other . Negativity as a possibility condition for differentiation 1. The impossibility of radical negativity . . . 199

2. Negation as operation . . . 200

3. Negativity as an attribute of negation . . . 202

4. The aporia of radical negativity . . . 203

5. Negativity as the enactment of reality in time . . . 205

6. Versions of negativity . . . 208

7. Ramified negativity: contradiction and conflict . . . 211

8. Ontological negativity: from the singular to the whole 216

9. Negative dialectics: non-identity and redemption . . . . 218

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XVII Table of Contents

10. Double negativity: determinating and repudiating . . . . 221

11. Semiotic negativity: possibilities and realities . . . 224

12. The relationship of difference between systems of differences . . . 227

13. The reality of negativity and the impossibility of radical negativity . . . 230

G. Neither possible nor impossible . Impossibility as a boundary concept and boundary horizon of differentiation 1. Theories of Everything . . . 232

2. Phenomena as sign-events . . . 234

3. Impossibility as a modal boundary concept . . . 238

4. Not possible or not necessary? . . . 239

5. Becoming and becoming-other . . . 240

6. Hegel’s necessary actuality and Kierkegaard’s modal paradox . . . 243

7. Possibility as potentia and possibilitas . . . 244

8. Formal and ontological impossibility . . . 247

9. Limits of being and truth . . . 248

10. The ambiguity of boundaries . . . 250

11. Cultural counterworlds . . . 252

12. Religion as the locus of the impossible . . . 254

13. Differentiated impossibilities . . . 256

H. Orientation to Transcendence . The point of making distinctions 1. The avoidability and inevitability of the orientation to transcendence . . . 260

2. The priority of the divine / worldly distinction . . . 261

3. Distinctions of order and of location . . . 262

4. Becoming more than we can . . . 264

5. Added meaning . . . 266

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XVIII Table of Contents

6. Orientation to God in a secular world . . . 269

7. Faith and theology in secular society . . . 272

8. Renewal of existence . . . 274

9. The public character of faith . . . 277

10. Ultimate presence . . . 278

Index of Names . . . 281

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A. Orientation by Distinctions . Christian faith and the secular world

We live in a secular age in which faith in God, the gods or the divine is no longer the norm, but has become just one option amongst others.1 This is true despite considerable differences between the regions of the world, and despite the fact that the secularisation process varies in different cultural contexts and certainly does not always lead to the dissolution or dismantling of religious affiliations and orientations.

1. Secularity, religion and spirituality

Secularisation  – the “worldlification” of the world  – can take many forms, not all of which rule out the possibility that people are leading a religious or spiritual life. There is a difference, but no sharp dividing line, between the two. It is true that religion exists only in the diversity of world religions; however, it is not just someone who participates in collective religious practice who lives religiously, but also anyone who reverences the order and diversity of life and is careful to follow the precepts that give life a deeper meaning. And spirituality, too, consists not simply in participation in the conventional pious practices of a religious tradition, but is understood in a broader sense as the search for meaning and for a life that experiences “connect- edness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature and to the

1 Ch. Taylor, A Secular Age, Cambridge, MA 2007; H. Joas, Faith as an Option: Possible Futures for Christianity, Stanford 2014.

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2 Ingolf U. Dalferth · Transcendence and the Secular World significant or sacred”.2 However, not all religion, religiosity or spirituality equates to consciousness of transcendence, and not all consciousness of transcendence is religious or spiritual. There are ‘religions’ such as Shintō or Confucianism that consider life to be lived predominantly in the here and now, and there is an awareness of transcendence in numerous cultural communities that neither are nor wish to be religious.

Even in the West, leaving the church is not necessarily the same as loss of religion, but rather the reverse side of a search that turns to other religious forms and a creative, selective and indi- viduating acceptance of unfamiliar spiritual traditions. Those who seek find a great deal. And those who do not (any longer) find what they are seeking in the traditional forms of their reli- gion and culture will seek it elsewhere. But what is being sought?

Perhaps it is a search for religion as something with which one can align oneself because one has to make an explicit decision in favour of it. Religion is meaningless if it does not confront me with existential decisions that give me a new view of myself, my world, others and God. In that case it is merely an inherited social custom, which one can dispense with, since it neither demands anything from one, nor reveals anything to one. One does not even need to oppose or criticise it in order to be free of it: one simply ignores it.

2 Chr. M. Puchalski et al., Improving the Quality of Spiritual Care as a Dimension of Palliative Care: The Report of the Consensus Conference, Journal of Palliative Medicine 12 (2009) 885–904, here: 887:

“Spirituality is the aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose, and the way they experience their connectedness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature and to the significant or sacred.” Cf. S. Peng-Keller, Spiritual Care als theo- logische Herausforderung. Eine Ortsbestimmung, Theological Literatur- zeitung 140 (2015) 454–467.

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3 A. Orientation by Distinctions

2. Being a Christian as a dual and double-sided decision This linking of religion, decision and identity is a phenome- non characteristic of modernity. But it has a long prehistory, closely connected with the history of Christianity. Christianity originally began as an eschatological religion of decision, in a twofold sense. According to Christian conviction, God showed himself in Jesus Christ and through his Spirit to be the one who has decided permanently and irrevocably for human beings, even though they are living as sinners, leading a life that ignores God and is remote from him. That is the heart of the Christian message of God’s redemptive coming to renew the world out of love for his creatures. Humans, for their part, can decide for or against God’s decision by placing their faith in the Christian message of God’s decision for them, or by not doing so, either because they do not know the facts of this message, or because they explicitly refuse or reject it. If they do put their faith in it, they do not consider this to be their own decision, but rather to be the work of God, who decided unconditionally for human beings, as became clear in and through Jesus Christ, and who through his Spirit enables them to decide for this decision, demonstrated by their change from unfaith to a life of faith. In their baptism Christians acknowledge God’s decision as their unmerited gift, which has freed them from their old attachments and orientations and which opens the door to a new form of life with God and with each other. When they present themselves for baptism, they are deciding for a life of faith and simultaneously against a life of unfaith. God’s decision for human beings (Jesus Christ) and his self-mediation of this decision to human beings (Spirit) means that the old life of remoteness from and rejection of God is left behind and the new life in fellowship with God, opened up by God through Jesus Christ and the Spirit, becomes not just possible, but actual (new being). Of his own free will God has made himself our neighbour, so that all human beings

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4 Ingolf U. Dalferth · Transcendence and the Secular World can call on him as their good father and are to be considered and treated as children, heirs and neighbours of God. In this new community of God’s neighbours there are – as Paul says – no longer Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, men or women (Gal. 3:28), since none of those distinctions are determining factors for the new life in Christ.

God’s neighbours’ new identity is not their own choice, but a free gift from God. No one can obtain it for themselves, nor does anyone have a right to it, which is why no one has a greater right to it than anyone else. Where it enters someone’s consciousness, it is perceived as a gift and a mission from God which is not attached to any prior conditions. One can accept it in faith as it stands, or ignore and refuse it in unfaith. Both responses con- firm that this new identity is a gift and provision that does not depend on one’s own acceptance or rejection, but precedes them and is what makes them possible at all. It is not something one had always been searching for, but the experience of something unexpected and new, of the improbable possibility that God is becoming neighbour to those who do not care about him. To find one’s identity as a neighbour of God, it is not even necessary that one is engaged in a search for it. It can happen against one’s own wishes and intentions, as when Paul was converted from being a persecutor of Christians to becoming an apostle of Christ, for instance. Where it meets with a response, it leads to the identity being split into an old and a new self. As Paul writes in Romans 7, the existential tension between the two cannot be resolved in either direction, but can only be endured with the help of God.

One is no longer in control of oneself, but, as God’s neighbour, one belongs to another’s sphere of control, whether one wel- comes that in faith or disregards or disputes it in unfaith.

One can acknowledge this new identity by giving thanks for God’s gift, being baptised and thus deciding against a life in unfaith and for a life in faith in the Christ-community of the new being. Alternatively, one can reject God’s gift and refuse the

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5 A. Orientation by Distinctions

change of orientation to a life in faith, thus remaining in the Ad- am-community of the old being. Every human being belongs to this old humanity (Adam) in which everything revolves around self-assertion, self-preservation and self-promotion, which is why a life in faith can only ever exist when one turns away from a life in unfaith. But everyone can in fact belong to the new hu- manity (Christ), which God opens up to us by making himself our neighbour in such a way that love for God, and for everyone else as God’s neighbours, can determine our lives. However, just as the decision for Christ does not in itself constitute the new being, so equally the non-decision for, or the decision against, Christ does not negate the new being. God’s gift and thus God’s decision for human beings precedes any human decision-mak- ing (dual decision). God’s decision is what makes the human decision possible in the first place: now we can live a life oriented towards God’s love in reliance on God’s gift, and can decide against unfaith and for a life in faith (double-sided decision).3 But God’s decision also makes the human decision essential:

given God’s decision, a lack of an explicit human decision for or against it is nonetheless a decision – in which case it can remain uncertain whether such a non-decision must always constitute a decision against, or whether the acutal life of the one concerned can in fact offer proof of the opposite.

These are the fundamental characteristics of the new being in Christ, as outlined by Paul. The more, however, a life orientation in accordance with the new being in Christ was reduced to one religious form amongst others, becoming, in the Roman empire, the dominant religion into which one was born and within

3 Deciding for a life in faith and against a life in unfaith are the two sides of one and the same decision, not two different acts of decision. But this double-sided decision is contingent upon and enabled by the prior decision on God’s part, without which there neither could nor would be a human decision for a life with God and against a life of disregard for or denial of the presence of God.

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6 Ingolf U. Dalferth · Transcendence and the Secular World which one grew up culturally and socially, the less this dual moment of decision shaped and characterised Christian being and consciousness. Of course it was kept in mind in the church’s baptismal practice. However, the practice of infant baptism em- phasised the gift-character of faith in Christ and being Christian, and therefore God’s decision for the human being, but only to a lesser extent the human decision for God’s decision in taking leave of the old and turning to the new life. The church’s intro- duction of confirmation is a reaction to this problem. The debate over the practice of infant baptism and the call for adult baptism are examples of the conflicts that arose from this. While the one stresses God’s unconditional antecedent decision for human be- ings, the other insists on the human responsibility to make one’s own decision for God’s prior decision. And whereas for the one, membership of the church is the social norm, to be adopted out of regard for the church as an institution, for the other no church membership is legitimate in Christian terms unless it is based on a personal decision. Unless you decide in favour yourself, you do not really belong. And one who explicitly decides against has at least understood that a decision has to be made.

3. Religion in late modernity

The conflict is a paradigm for the way modernity handles reli- gion. The process of modernity has led increasingly to religion being deemed a social and cultural given. One participated in it, one could even participate in it in a purely external manner, without taking any specific decision. It has become a mark of the individual identity, distinctiveness, authenticity, perhaps even the sacrality of the person. Whether one lives religiously or not, one ought to do either from conviction. Just joining in by itself is not enough, but nor is not joining in. One must make a wholehearted commitment for or against. But the price of

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7 A. Orientation by Distinctions

this pressure to identify oneself is high. When it is a matter of authenticity and one’s own identity, even the incidental becomes significant. Nothing can be up for negotiation, everything has to be defended: images in church, crosses on mountain tops or in courtrooms, public holidays, cultic vestments, Latin masses, rites of circumcision and full-body veils. Everything is always pivotal, and one’s very self is constantly at stake. No longer is there any distinction between the issue and the person, between the important and the less important.

For many that is just too demanding. But they cannot avoid the pressure to identify by questioning the coupling of religion with identity, but only by becoming indifferent to everything religious. They are not for one religion and against others, nor are they even for or against religion as a whole. All that no longer has anything to do with them and their identity. Everything religious has ceased to be of interest to them and they seek their authenticity and identity elsewhere.

Others hold onto the idea that religion and faith are pivotal to one’s own identity, but can no longer find this identity within the bounds of traditional religious forms. They are not aban- doning faith and religion themselves, but their institutionalised social forms and organisational membership structures. They are searching for other forms of spiritual life, and they find them eas- ily in the global market of religions, where supply and demand constantly reinforce each other. As Daniel Bell stated, back in the seventies: “Where religions fail, cults appear.”4

Thus we cannot speak of the end of religion. Even in an en- lightened Europe religion is still present in numerous different ways, both in private life and in the public arena.5 And there is

4 D. Bell, Die Zukunft der westlichen Welt. Kultur und Technologie im Widerstreit, Frankfurt a. M. 1979, 201.

5 Th. Luckmann, Die unsichtbare Religion (1967), Frankfurt a. M.

2005; P. L. Berger (ed.), The Desecularization of the World. Resurgent Religion and World Politics, Washington, D. C. 1999.

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8 Ingolf U. Dalferth · Transcendence and the Secular World some evidence that trends in the development of fundamentalist movements, as seen not only in Islam, but also in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism,6 may actually be caused by the alienating forces of economic, technological, cultural and media-oriented globalisation, rather than by the functional differentiation of society and a politically, legally, morally and scientifically secularising modernity.7 In order to participate on an equal footing in political and legal affairs, morality and science, and to be recognised in those fields, one can be, but does not necessarily have to be, religious. Each of these spheres has its own logic, its own norms and values and its own guiding principles. A religious orientation cannot be a determining fac- tor, in either a negative or a positive sense, if peaceful coexistence between humans of differing convictions and philosophies of life is to be possible in a plural society.8

This has changed the traditional religions themselves, as well.

The conflict between religion and the secular world long ago became a conflict within the religious traditions themselves.

And in fact, not just a conflict between premodern and modern trends in individual religions, but to an even greater extent a conflict-ridden split among those who are not closed off in a tra- ditionalistic way to social modernisation processes, but actively react to them. Thus there are some who endeavour to establish a positive relationship with these processes and to update their religious traditions in line with modern conditions, while others

6 Cf. C. Six / S. Haas / M. Riesebrodt (ed.), Religiöser Fundamen- talismus: Vom Kolonialismus zur Globalisierung, Innsbruck 2005.

7 Cf. B. Kaiser, Der Terror der Entwurzelung. Die Ursache des Neo fundamentalismus, Neue Ordnung 2 (2013) 19–23; M. Mies, Glo- balisierung und religiöser Fundamentalismus (http://w w w . w a s - d i e - m a s s e n m e d i e n - v e r s c h w e i g e n . d e / a k t u e l l / G l o b a l i s i e r u n g F u n d a m e n t a l i s m u s .pdf) (12/8/2014).

8 Cf. F. W. Graf, Dient Religion dem guten Leben? Ein Plädoyer gegen jede Selbstverabsolutierung, Hamburg 2012; idem, Götter global. Wie die Welt zum Supermarkt der Religionen wird, München 2014.

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9 A. Orientation by Distinctions

adopt a negative, fundamentalist stance and reject the challenges of modernity, not just ignoring them but actively opposing them.

The definitive signature of the current religious situation is not the conflict between traditionalists and modernists. Rather it is the conflict between reformers, who are attempting to affirm in a new way the basic insights of their religion under the dynamically changing conditions of late modernity, and funda- mentalists, who do not want to engage with the questions posed by modernity, but rather to oppose it actively in the name of their religion and to set up their own construct of their religious tradition. They are both modernisers. However, the former see modernity as a religious challenge with which they are engaging, whereas the latter perceive it as a call to a religious antimoder- nity, which they are using modern means to affirm.

4. Sociological interpretations

All this has been discussed in detail in recent years.9 One can, in company with José Casanova and Charles Taylor, question the sustainability of an oversimplifying undifferentiated theory of

9 Cf. J. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World, Chicago / London 1994; D. Martin, On Secularization: Towards a Revised Gen- eral Theory, Aldershot 2005; D. Novak, The Jewish Social Contract. An Essay in Political Theology, Princeton 2005; J. Stout, Democracy and Tradition, Princeton 2005; Taylor, A Secular Age. An overview of older literature in English is provided by K. M. Schultz, Secularization:

A Bibliographic Essay, Hedgehog Review (2006) 170–178. For a wider appreciation of the debate as it affects the field of law, cf. H. Dreier, Säkularisierung und Sakralität. Zum Selbstverständnis des modernen Verfassungsstaates, Tübingen 2013. For the theological backgrounds to the secularisation thesis, cf. J. Dierken, Immanente Eschatologie?

Säkularisierung bei Hegel, Troeltsch und Löwith, in: idem, Ganzheit und Kontrafaktizität. Religion in der Sphäre des Sozialen, Tübingen 2014, 219–238.

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10 Ingolf U. Dalferth · Transcendence and the Secular World secularisation and develop counter-narratives,10 or one can, with Detlef Pollack and others, point to comprehensive and mean- ingful empirical data that ought not to be ignored.11 One can adopt Niklas Luhmann’s view that, although religion does not necessarily have to play a role in the life of every human being, on a social level it examines a basic problem which no society can evade: religion observes “the un-observability of the world and of the observer”12 and thus considers the basic prerequisite for all social reality: the improbable possibility of meaning. One can, as Habermas does, turn this around so that one sees, in the traditional elements of religion, not just premodern conflict potential, but normative resources of meaning which can be rendered fruitful through the translation of religious content into a neutral language for use in a plural democracy and liberal civil society.13 One can take such perspectives, with their focus

10 Casanova, Public Religions; Taylor, A Secular Age.

11 D. Pollack, Säkularisierung – ein moderner Mythos? Studien zum religiösen Wandel in Deutschland, Tübingen 2003; idem, Rückkehr des Religiösen? Studien zum religiösen Wandel in Deutschland und in Europa II, Tübingen 2009; idem / U. Willems / H. Basu / Th. Gutmann / U. Spohn (eds.), Moderne und Religion: Kontroversen um Modernität und Säkularisierung, Bielefeld 2012; K. Gabriel / Chr. Gärtner / D. Pollack (eds.), Umstrittene Säkularisierung. Soziologische und histo- rische Analysen zur Differenzierung von Religion und Politik, Berlin 2012;

U. Oevermann / M. Franzmann, Strukturelle Religiosität auf dem Wege zur religiösen Indifferenz, in: M. Franzmann / Chr. Gärtner / N. Köck (eds.), Religiosität in der säkularisierten Welt. Theoretische und empirische Beiträge zur Säkularisierungsdebatte in der Religionssoziologie, Wiesbaden 2006, 49–82.

12 N. Luhmann, Die Religion der Gesellschaft, published by A. Kie- serling, Frankfurt a. M. 2000, 29.

13 J. Habermas, Glauben und Wissen. German Book Trade Peace Prize 2001, Suhrkamp special edition, Frankfurt a. M. 2001; idem, Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion. Philosophische Aufsätze, Frankfurt a. M. 2005;

K. Wenzel / Th. M. Schmidt (eds.), Moderne Religion? Theologische und religionsphilosophische Reaktionen auf Jürgen Habermas, Freiburg i. Br. 2009; M. Breul, Religion in der politischen Öffentlichkeit. Zum

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Index of Names

Adorno, Theodor W. 43, 218–220 Alexander, Horace G. 57 Alston, William P. 249 Ammon, Sabine 137 Angehrn, Emil XII Anselm of Canterbury 151 Arens, Edmund 37

Aristotle 129–132, 135, 239, 240, 246, 249

Arndt, Andreas 34 Asmuth, Christoph 216, 217 Augustine, Aurelius 12, 28, 116,

133, 151, 184, 268 Badiou, Alain 64–72, 82, 85 Barrow, John D. 250 Barth, Hans-Martin 104 Barth, Karl 12, 151, 154 Barth, Ulrich 34 Basu, Helene 10

Beckermann, Ansgar 137, 138 Bell, Daniel 7, 271

Bellah, Robert B. 47, 87 Berger, Peter L. 7, 17 Blond, Philip 28

Blumenberg, Hans 59, 60, 61, Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 1262 Borutta, Manuel 20 Braun, Walter 175

Breul, Martin 10, 13, 150, 270 Brown, Spencer G. 92, 222 Buchenau, Artur 56 Bühler, Pierre 72, 92

Calvin, Jean 151

Casanova, José 9, 10, 16, 20 Cassirer, Ernst 56 Clarke, Samuel 57 Classen, Claus D. 33, 34 Cresswell, Max J. 240 Dalferth, Ingolf U. X, 13, 21,

33, 36, 44, 47, 48, 52, 53, 72, 76, 80, 82, 87, 102, 106, 128, 129, 131, 133, 183, 198, 215, 222, 224

Dawkins, Richard 22, 28 Derrida, Jaques 208 Dierken, Jörg 9 Dobbelare, Karel 16, 22 Dörsam, Peter 175 Dreier, Horst 9 Durkheim, Emile 11, 20 Ebeling, Gerhard 12 Eberle, Christopher 35 Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie 187 Ecklund, Elaine H. 105 Eder, Klaus 20

Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 16, 17 Ette, Wolfram 219

Famos, Cla R. 33 Feil, Ernst 13

Felix, Minucius M. 112–115 Fichte, Johann G. 217 Fischer, Yochi 21 Flasch, Kurt 133

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282 Ingolf U. Dalferth · Transcendence and the Secular World v. Foerster, Heinz 190

Franzmann, Majella 10 Frege, Gottlieb 229 Gabriel, Karl 10 Gabriel, Markus 55 Gärtner, Christel 10 Gerhardt, Volker 157 Germann, Michael 34 Gettier, Edmund 136 Gigerenzer, Gerd 176 Gogarten, Friedrich 12 Gondek, Hans-Dieter 52 Gottschalk-Mazouz, N. 137 Graf, Friedrich W. 8, 21 Gräb, Wilhelm 34 Greisch, Jean 92 Grøn, Arne 129 Guevara, Che 257 Gutmann, Thomas 10 Haas, Siegfried 8 Habermas, Jürgen 10, 148 Hamm, Bernd 71 Hankey, Wayne J. 29 Harris, Sam 28

Hartshorne, Charles 59, 60, 64, Hedley, Douglas 29151

Hegel, Georg W. F. 9, 151, 206, 208, 210, 216–218, 243, 246 Heidbrink, Ludger 219 Heidegger, Martin 65–68, 74, Hening, William W. 27112 Henrich, Dietrich 250 Henry, Michel 73 Höhn, Hans-Joachim 13 Hogrebe, Wolfram 203 Hollywood, Amy 68 Hoping, Helmut 37

Hughes, George E. 240 Hume, David 151 Hunziker, Andreas 72, 92 Husserl, Edmund 112 Jefferson, Thomas 27 Jelles, Jarigh 203, 224

Jesus (Christ) 82, 103, 109, 116, 164, 243, 254, 274, 275, 276 Joas, Hans 1, 11, 47, 87 John 80, 81

Johannsen, Friedrich 13 Jolley, Nicholas 57 Jonkers, Peter 82 Jüngel, Eberhard 12 Kaiser, Benedikt 8

Kant, Immanuel 80, 131–135, 151, 154–157, 158, 183, 199, 210, 211–214, 216, 221, 239, Kieserling, André 10253 King, Mike 31

Kierkegaard, Søren 151, 158, 233, 240–246, 251–255 Köck, Nicole 10 Küchenhoff, Joachim XI Kühn, Rolf 73

Lacan, Jaques 69, 75 Lehmann, Hartmut 20 Leibniz, Georg W. 53, 56–64,

243, 248, 252 Lenzen, Wolfgang 135 Locke, John 151–153 Löwith, Karl 9 Lonergan, Bernard 131 Luckmann, Thomas 7 Lübbe, Hermann 20 Luhmann, Niklas 10, 18, 174 Luther, Martin 12, 165

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283 Index of Names

Mandl, Heinz 137 Marion, Jean-Luc 73 Markus, Robert A. 30 Martin, David 9, 16, 20, 21 Mathewes, Charles 29 Mauthner, Fritz 247 McRae, Robert 57 Meiklejohn, John M. D. 155 Michel, Paul 104

Mies, Maria 8 Milbank, John 28 Moeller, Bernd 71 Montaigne, Michel de 270 Motzkin, Gabriel 21 Napoleon 247 Nicholas of Cusa 151 Nietzsche, Friedrich 110 Norman, Judith 110 Novak, David 9, 20, 22 Oevermann, Ulrich 10 Park, Jerry Z. 105 Parkinson, George H. R. 57 Patzig, Günter 229 Paul 4, 5, 12, 68, 81, 82 Peng-Keller, Simon 2 Pickstock, Catherine 28 Pollack, Detlef 10, 21 Puchalski, Christina M. 2 Quinlan, John R. 175 Reinmann-Rothmeier, Gabi Rentsch, Thomas 87137 Ridley, Aaron 110 Riesebrodt, Martin 8 Rodgers, Michae Ch. 80, 106 Röd, Wolfgang 203

Sarot, Marcel 82 Scheler, Max 271 v. Scheliah, Arnulf 104 Schellenberg, John 50 Schelling, Friedrich W. J. 217 Schiller, Friedrich 221 Schleiermacher, Daniel F. E. 27,

35, 151, 154

Schmidt, Thomas M. 10 Schönemann, Hubertus 12 Schröder, Richard 28 Schultz, Kevin M. 9 Schweitzer, Friedrich XI Seidel, Wolfgang 175 Simon, Josef 130, 131 Sirovátka, Jakub 95 Six, Clemens 8 Smith, James K. A. 28 Socrates 130 Söder, Joachim 12 Solso, Robert 137 Sorrell, Katherine L. 105 Spinoza, Baruch de 203, 234 Spohn, Ulrike 10

Staudigl, Matthias 73 Stegmüller, Wolfgang 175 Stern, Jakob 203 Stoellger, Philipp 131 Stolz, Fritz 17 Stout, Jeffrey 9, 20, 22 Striet, Magnus 12 Swinburne, Richard 135 Taylor, Charles 1, 9, 19, 20, 100,

119–122

Tegtmeyer, Henig 214, 215 Tengelyi, László 52 Thomas Aquinas 133 Thriambos, Dionysios 39 Troeltsch, Ernst 9

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284 Ingolf U. Dalferth · Transcendence and the Secular World Viney, Don W. 60

Ward, Graham 28 Weber, Max 20, 25 Welz, Claudia 129 Wendebourg, Dorothea 71 Wenzel, Knut 10

Westphal, Merold 75, 76 Whitehead, Alfred 64 Willems, Ulrich 10, Wilson, Bryan R. 15, 16 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 137, 201 Žižek, Slavoj 68–71

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